Fix your posture – fix your health!

A couple of weeks ago I spoke about how posture can affect our health. If you haven’t read that post yet click here. This post will allow you to develop a good understanding as to why our posture is so important and serve as a base for you to use the advice below.

Adults tend to spend several hours a day hunched over a keyboard, driving, texting, cooking and many more activities that increase the curve in our thoracic and cervical spine. As you would be aware by now this is incredibly damaging to our health and can lead to an array of issues, I bet more than you ever even knew. The good news is there are some really quick and easy strategies that we can use to manage this.

We have put together a short, easy routine that you can incorporate into your day. Do the whole routine or pick a couple of your favourite exercises and do them throughout the day, the whole set of exercises will take around 15-20 minutes. How you go about incorporating these exercises into your day is up to you, but you must do them if you want your posture and health to improve.

Bruggers Relief

Sit on the edge of a chair or fit ball with your feet flat and hands by your side.

As you take an inhale, lift your chest, lengthen your spine, turn your palms outwards and relax your shoulders down. This will open up your chest.

Hold this position for 3 long deep breaths, without coming out of the position.

Relax, and then repeat this 3 more times.

Scapular Retraction

Hold both arms out by your side in an L shape.

Squeeze shoulder blades together for 10 seconds, repeat 3x.

Pec and Neck Stretch

Hold each stretch for 20-40 seconds, and repeat on both sides.

Posture Pole

Lie on a posture pole making sure your head and tailbone are on the pole. If you don’t have a posture pole you can use a foam roller or rolled up towel.

Lie here for 5-10 minutes depending how much time you have.

Its even better if you can lie on your pole for 10 minutes, twice a day.

The above exercises are great at helping to counteract that hunched shoulder posture. Not only do they have incredible benefits for our physical health, but sustained good posture has beneficial effects on mood, immune system, reproductive system and digestion just to name a few.

If you have any questions about any of these exercises please don’t hesitate to contact us. We are always more than happy to assist you in reaching your health goals.